Thoreau writes in his journal:
Humphrey Buttrick says that he finds old and young of both kinds of small rails, and that they breed here, though he never saw their nests . . .
The large shallow cups of the red oak acorns look like some buttons I have seen which had lost their core . . .
A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
Again to the village and back. Thoreau comes home with me and stays to supper. Good company always and present in Nature, and the best of her. An out-of-doors man, and with doors opening on all sides of him, slides in slides, to admit her to his intelligence. His senses seem doubled and give him access to secrets not read easily by other men. His observation is wonderful, his sagacity like a bee and beaver, the dog and the deer—the most gifted in this way of any mind I have known, and the peer of the backwoodsman and Indian.
He stays and discusses matters and men for an hour or two, and admirably. I suspect he deals better with matters, somewhat, than with men, but masterly with either, and anything he meddles with or takes seriously in hand. I am proud of him. I should say he inspired love, if indeed the sentiment he awakens did not seem to partake of something yet purer, if that were possible, and as yet nameless from its rarity and excellency. Certainly he is better poised and more nearly self-sufficient than other men.
(The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 309)
